1. HOME
  2. Research Projects

Research Projects

Apr 1, 2010 - Mar 31, 2012

Project on Evidence Based Evaluation for Innovation Policies

Leader

Recently, the need for policy evaluation and verification has been rapidly increasing in Japan. In science technology and innovation policies, it is necessary to set a clear theoretical foundation and objectives for individual policies, to objectively evaluate the actual effect and then to make a decision to abolish, downsize, improve or expand based on the evidence. Such policies include subsidies for research and development, prioritized fund allocations to specific areas, the promotion of cooperation among government, industry and academia, the enhancement of intellectual properties, the development of industry clusters and tax incentive for research and development. In reality, however, such evaluation and verification have not moved forward due to several existing issues including a lack of understanding of the theoretical foundation of the policies, a gap in the perception of goals between the policy-making level and the program-planning level, insufficient collection and accumulation of evidence data supporting the grounds for the evaluation and vague standards for evaluating the level of achievement of policy objectives.

For example, with respect to subsidies for research and development in private companies, infusions of public funds are justified in economic theory as spill-over frequently occurs in basic research and therefore, private companies would be likely to make insufficient investment. On the other hand, with regard to individual projects, evaluation standards for the level of achievement of objectives are now usually set when adopting a project. However, evaluations and analyses are not sufficient in respect to what extent spill-over occurs in an entire program or policy, the difference between companies with subsidies and those without them and how corporate behaviors have changed. In addition, science technology and innovation policies should normally be evaluated in terms of both the short-term outcome and the medium- to long-term outcome, but a proper framework for evaluation has yet to be established.

This project focuses on building a logic model including a logical background or the basis and structure of the validity of individual policies, as well as analyzing to what extent the evaluation of the level of achievement of objectives at each process level is conducted. The process levels include the policy-making level, the program-planning level and the project-implementing level. The project also aims to develop an evaluation framework based on reliable evidence collected through empirical evaluation studies both in the short-term and medium- to long-term.